


Snowball Fight

by SmokySky



Series: Tommy Shelby's 12 Days Of Christmas [1]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Advent Calendar, Advent Calendar Drabble, Alternate Universe - Children, Alternate Universe - School, Drabble Collection, Gen, Snowball Fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:35:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21636733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmokySky/pseuds/SmokySky
Summary: 12 Days of Christmas Advent Calendar fic based on the prompt: Snowball Fight.In which Tommy makes a lifelong friend during a snowball fight - or the aftermath of it, anyway.
Relationships: Tommy Shelby & Original Female Character(s)
Series: Tommy Shelby's 12 Days Of Christmas [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1559590
Comments: 1
Kudos: 29





	Snowball Fight

**Author's Note:**

> Happy 1st of December, everyone!
> 
> I'm attempting to write 12 short fics for the 12 days of Christmas - _it was going to be 25, but that is just too ambitious for me_ \- but I'm starting today because I'm always so slow at writing things. All the stories will be focused on the same characters, set roughly in chronological order, but there's real overarching plot-line here, it's just for fun. But of course I'd love to hear what you guys think, and if you enjoyed the story please do leave comments and kudos below!
> 
> So, to kick things off, we've got young Tommy making a new friend in the aftermath of a snowball fight with the new girl at his school, Mable...

Tommy met Mabel when they were five and she started at his school.

He’d chucked a snowball at John’s head, because John wouldn’t shut up about Tommy staring at the new girl - _which was silly, because even if Tommy was looking at the new girl it was only because she looked weird with her posh green coat and shiny boots_ \- but John had ducked, so instead of hitting his younger brother, Tommy’s snowball hit Mabel on the back of the head. All the Shelby siblings had frozen. They hadn’t known how the new girl was going to react, but they knew kids with expensive clothes could cause a lot of problems for them when they told on them to the teachers.

But Mabel hadn’t told on them.

She turned around to see who had thrown the snowball at her, and found all the Shelby siblings staring at her. Tommy waited for her to start crying and run to the teachers, but she didn’t.

Instead of bursting into tears, running away, calling for the teachers watching over the playground, or doing anything that Tommy was expecting her to do, Mabel scooped up her own handful of snow, slowly compacted into a ball, and then lobbed it straight at John, who had started laughing at her making her own snowball.

_He wasn’t laughing at her after it hit him._

John actually stumbled back, spluttering, when the snowball hit him square in the mouth. He couldn’t speak even after the snow had fallen down his chin, too surprised to say or do anything back to the new girl that was now watching them all smugly. Part of Tommy was impressed; even Ada, who was the toughest girl he knew, wasn’t ballsy enough to face down four strangers and dare them to do something without even saying a word, and it was in that moment he decided that he liked the new girl, even if she was a toff. But that didn’t stop the part of him that knew he had to defend his family. Even if John probably deserved it _(this was all his fault for ducking Tommy’s snowball, after all)_ he was still family, and they had to defend him.

Tommy and Arthur were making their own snowballs, but she obviously saw what they were going to do, and clearly she decided she was going to get her strikes in first.

Arthur swore when a snowball hit him on the top of his head while he was looking down, and Tommy almost fell on his backside when the snowball aimed at him hit him on the cheek when he looked up to see what was happening to Arthur. He still managed to hit Mabel, but his aim was off, the snowball bouncing off of her arm. And by then she was already throwing more snowballs - far quicker than Arthur, Tommy, or John put together, and far better at aiming too.

Ada came flying to the rescue, rounding the corner and seeing the other girl hurling snowballs at her brothers, breaking into a run and tackling Mabel into the pile of snow behind her - but that didn’t stop Mabel. She rolled around in the slush with Ada, until she had Ada pinned and was chucking handful and handful of snow into Tommy’s younger sister’s face.

Of course he wasn’t going to just let that happen.

He sprinting across the playground, but was stopped from reaching the girls by two boys who had the same blonde hair as the new girl. The bigger one, who was bigger than even Arthur, slung Tommy backwards so he landed on his arse, while the smaller one managed to stick his leg out in front of Arthur so that Arthur tripped over it and landed face first into the snow...but neither of them could stop John, who lunged at the one who had tripped Arthur, smashing a fistful of snow into the boy’s face and rubbing it in his eyes.

Then there was a blur of green, and suddenly the new girl was tackling John off of her brother onto the cobblestones of the playground, shortly followed by the flash of Ada’s red coat entering the ball that was John and the new girl fighting on the floor, and then Tommy sort of lost track of what was happening: with everything becoming a dizzyingly quick blur of hard-packed snowballs, flurries of powdery snow flying up, and fists, with neither side willing to surrender.

Eventually the teachers came to break it up. The boys separated without much of a fuss, but the girls had to be dragged apart before the lot of them were hauled back into the classroom.

Tommy found himself sitting at the end of the line of his siblings, glaring at the new girl, who was sitting next to him at the end of the line of her own siblings, glaring right back at him.

“He started it!” - “She started it!”

The teacher ignored both of them trying to speak over each other, glaring at both of them: “I don’t care who started it. All of your behaviours were disgraceful! You two, Ada and John, fighting Mabel at the end of her first week here - you should be welcoming her to our school, not rolling around in the dirt! And Harrison, Edward, is this really the kind of first impression you want to be making during your first week...”

The teacher went on and on, talking about welcomes and first impressions, while both Tommy and Mabel sat their with their arms crossed, refusing to listen to her. As far as Tommy was concerned, the man was talking out of his backside - he didn’t want to listen to what any of them had to say, he just wanted to keep talking about respect and being kind and good will towards all men because it was nearly Christmas, even though it was barely December, and honestly Tommy was just _bored_ now. _Really_ bored.

He slumped back in his seat, and out of the corner of his eye he saw that Mabel had done the same, looking just as bored as he felt. That made Tommy feel a little better; she should be bored, it was her fault they were all stuck in here getting told off, at least a bit. Tommy was happy she was bored. She deserved it. But he was happier when the teacher finally told them that they could leave.

All seven of them scarpered before he could change his mind, fleeing into the empty playground and separating into their two groups to whisper amongst each other.

“She’s got a really good throw.” John was the first one to speak, his expression all soft as he looked over Tommy’s shoulder at Mabel: “Do you think she’d want to be our friend?”

Tommy looked over his own shoulder to where Mabel had seen John’s soft look, and was glaring daggers at them, before turning back to John: “Not if you keep looking at her like that.”

“Why? That’s how you were looking at her.”

Tommy almost threw another snowball at John - there was no-one behind him now, so it wasn’t like Tommy would start another fight if John ducked - but he was distracted by Arthur clearing his throat.

They all turned to see what he was looking at, only to see watch Ada reach out to shake Mabel’s hand, the two girls having crossed the gap between the two groups to talk to each other. All three brothers shared a nervous look, before moving to get between Ada and Mabel before their hot-headed sister ended up re-starting the fight with Mabel and her brothers.

But Ada wasn’t arguing with Mabel - not at all. No, instead of fighting, the pair of them were smiling at each other.

In fact, Ada was more than smalling, she was grinning: “You fight pretty well, for a rich girl.”

“You’re not bad either, for someone so little.” Mabel laughed.

Ada laughed back, before half-turning to introduce her brothers to Mabel: “These are my brothers: Arthur, Tommy, and John. The snowball fight was probably John’s fault.”

“Hey! Tommy threw the first snowball.” John protested.

“Who’d he throw it at?” Ada asked.

John ducked his head - but Tommy had no problem answering for him: “John. He ducked. I’m sorry about that, by the way.” he looked to Mabel: “I didn’t mean to hit you with that snowball.”

“It’s okay. I’d probably throw snowballs at him too, if he normally makes faces like that.”

Tommy looked over to where John was still looking at Mabel with a soft look on his face, the idiot.

Sometimes Tommy really did wonder if John had been dropped on his head as a baby, even if Arthur insisted that he hadn’t.

“His face isn’t normally that bad...” Tommy sighed: “...But it’s still pretty stupid, most of the time.”

John glared at Tommy: “Like yours is any better.”

Mabel raised an eyebrow: “At least he doesn’t look like a sick puppy.”

John pouted, but Tommy could see he was trying not to smile, just as Tommy, Arthur, and Ada were trying not to laugh at him. Mabel was funny - and Tommy liked her. She was quick, and brave, and when she smiled it made Tommy want to smile too. He didn’t know why, because really he should dislike her for fighting with him and his siblings, but he didn’t. Instead, he was fairly sure that they were going to be friends.

And he was really happy about that.


End file.
